How to Reset Your Windows Password with Trinity

It happens to the best of us: we forget the password to our Windows computer and end up re-installing the OS, probably losing all your installed software and its settings or even important data.

There are a couple of ways to break into a password protected Windows installation, but most of them involve a difficult, arduous process. Other solutions are paid and usually ineffective. The method I’ll be mentioning here is pretty simple to pull off and uses a live [free] CD specially built for fixing computer problems and errors.

Disclaimer

These methods have been tested working by me not just once, but multiple time but as always, things can go bad sometimes. Also, please use these at your own discretion. We can not be held resposible for the abuse of these methods.

This tutorial is for people who have locked themselves out of their own computers — not for causing problems. Basically, behave, baby!

Getting Started

The software we are going to use today is named Trinity Rescue Kit. TRK is know as CPR for a computer. It can be used to solve all sorts of computer problems, ranging from common things like running a virus scan or doing more complex things like setting up a ssh server.

You can get TRK from TrinityHome. Download the 151MB ISO and burn it onto a CD or a USB drive. Yes, it even works on USB.

Booting Up

Trinity Rescue Kit Boot Selection

After you have burned a disk (or USB), restart your computer. When the computer is turning on, go to the boot menu (usually by pressing F8 on most computers, F9 on mine). When inside the boot menu, select the media you have the TRK on.

Selecting it would boot up anything that is in that media, in our case it is TRK. When TRK opens up, brings up its first menu, choose the first and default option. The menu will dissappear and TRK will start loading all of its utilities and we can get started.

Resetting the Password

Navigate down to 'Windows Password Resetting'

On to the actual work. When TRK loads you get a list of tasks TRK can perform. There is a solution present for almost all sort of problems and if you look at the 4th option(in v3.4), it says ‘Windows Password Resetting’.

Navigate down to it using the arrow keys and press enter once it is highlighted.

Menu for choosing which account to reset the password of

Once you select that option, you get an list of ways you can select which user you want to remove the password. Go ahead and choose the one that fulfills your requirement. I find ‘Winpass prompts for username first’ to be the best as I always know which account is going to be affected and some that another account doesn’t get accidently nuked. And for the purpose of today’s demonstration, this is the option we’re going to use.

Once you select the ‘Winpass prompts for username first’ option. TRK will ask you the username for the account for which you want to reset the password. Keep in mind that is case sensitive.

Choose which Windows to affect

At this point, TRK will search your hard drive for all currently installed Windows based OSs installed on the computer and list them. You’ll need to select the relevant installation here.

You select by entering the number which appears before the listed Windows. If you have only one OS installed, then merely press 1 and hit enter.

Now, at the final stage, you will get yet another list of options. Here, choose the method by which you want to remove the password. Press 1 and hit enter.

And that’s absolutely all you need to do. Now restart the computer by going back to the main menu and choosing the restart option. Now you can log-on into your computer without Windows prompting you for a password.

That’s All, Folks

Liked something? Hated something? I am sure that there are many more methods (possibly better methods) for removing the Windows password. We would love to hear from you in the comments box below. Thank you so much for reading!

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vatco

another live cd that integrates a password reset is hirens bootcd.i use it all the time and i can say that compared with trinity is more effective and takes less than a minute.and if you use windows xp you can find your old password with other integrated program in hirens boot.

Asad Salman

Hey!
Yeah…I’ve used Hiren’s boot CD a couple of times. And without a doubt it is a great live CD. I didn’t know that it had a password resetting utility in it too.

Thanks for the tip!

jackymark

Reset Windows 7/Vista/xp password with CMD. Key steps:
Step 1: Logon your Windows as administrator(You also can logon Safe Mode with Command Prompt, pressing F8 when restart your computer, hit up/down key to choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt and hit Enter).
Step 2: Click on Start, type cmd in the Run box or Search box and press Enter.
Step 3: Type net user, all user accounts of your computer will be listed.
Step 4: Type net user “UserName” “NewPassword”(replace UerName and NewPassword with yours), press Enter, then the password will be reset as new one and you can logon Windows 7/Vista with it. You also can use a program base on CMD.
Read more if you need: Recover Windows 7/vsta/xp/2008/2003/2000 password

Break Windows password with USB drive:
If you have a bootable CD/USB drive,some password tools can be burn to it and you can boot your computer from USB to run the software,so that you can recover/remove WIndows system password from USB.
Such as Windows Password Rescuer,here I just list the simple steps:
Step 1: Download Windows Password Rescuer
Step 2: Run it to burn to bootable CD/DVD or USB flash drive
Step 3: BIOS setting of your locked computer to boot form CD or USB
Step 4: Reset Windows password on a friendly window after Windows Password Rescuer starts.You also can use Windows Password Rescuer to add a new user with administrator privilege to your Windows without login. With this New user account you can logon your locked computer directly.